I own the SD870 and am interested in possibly upgrading to the new
SD880. Do those of you who own either/both feel it is a good
upgrade? The enhanced resolution is enticing, but not at the expense
of overall image quality.
Your comments are appreciated!
J Kahrs,
The two cameras are very similar, as you know. But, there are differences, to be sure. Whether or not it's compelling to upgrade, is purely subjective, from one person to another.
I've used both camersas. I bought my Mom an SD870 last year for Christmas. The pitures from it are bright, crisp and delightful, to be sure. It has the dust orb problem for indoor photos with flash. I would say that perhaps as many as 25% of the images have them in her shots that use flash. Maybe not a big deal to some, but to others, it is. To me, it was. I was interested in elimination of the problem by Canon, but otherwise wanted a small P/S ultra-compact SD type camera with wide angle. That of course left just the new SD880. Well, I was dubious too about whether it was any real improvement. In two words, it is.
It was not known at the time when I bought the camera (October) that the dust orb issue seemed to be resolved by Canon. But what was known was they redesigned the flash. It's obvious...look at it. It's half the width of the old one on the SD870. So far in my photography of over 400 images, I've only created one shot that has a definite dust orb present in the photo with flash fired, indoors. Now only about 5-10% of my photos are indoors. So, that doesn't say a lot, but it does say something; not many dust orbs. I think they fixed the problem.
Another issue is red-eye in photos. Now you can fix them in camera, and of course the SD880 has that. But, I don't seem to be getting many red-eye images out of the SD880. Is it due to the flash design changes, I don't know. But I don't see them. I've done one correction in camera, and it's very simple, and very quick. Nothing to it. Faster and easier than on a PC. So, again to me, there's an improvement.
The SD880 has Digic 4, which is compelling to me. It's able to track moving subjects in an image and adjust focus at the last instant to capture the best possible image. (It does other things) Now that's an improvement.
The buttons for the SD880 are well placed and larger than those of the SD870. And I like them. They have a nice click, they're logically organized and easy to get used to. There's really not much learning curve for the SD880 for other Canon camera users. The menu structure is basically the same as resent earlier models. (Like say, the SD870, or even older by as much as a couple of years) So, that's a plus. Not a lot new to learn, for those who don't like that. (Many just want to go take pictures and not read anything; so that's a breeze) But, you can read if you're so included. The manual is a bit over 150 pages. Easy reading though. Just read 10 pages a night and you'll be through it in two weeks.
The SD880 uses the same type memory cards and batteries as the SD870, so your old ones will migrate over.
To me, there are a lot of compelling reasons to buy the SD880, but I didn't own the SD870. My limited experience with my Mom's 870 tells me that the new camera is still a good deal. Everyone will not be convinced. That's OK. I was.
Glenn
--
Alexander...our wild child
Canon S2, A610, SD880
